Development of Satellite Positioning Systems (SATPSs), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the United States and the Global Orbiting Navigational System (GLONASS) in the former Soviet Union, has allowed location coordinates of an object on or near the Earth to be determined with improved accuracy. Under ordinary circumstances, these location coordinates can be determined with an inaccuracy of no more than 30 meters. In order to further improve the accuracy provided by SATPS location determination, differential GPS (DGPS), and more generally differential SATPS (DSATPS), has been introduced and used. A DSATPS can provide locations with inaccuracies as low as a few meters, or lower in some instances. Implementation of a DSATPS requires that an SATPS reference station, whose location coordinates are known with high accuracy (to within a fraction of a meter) be provided to receive the normal SATPS signals from an SATPS satellite. The reference station compares its known pseudorange, based on its known location and known satellite and clock biases, with the pseudorange computed using the acceptable SATPS signals received from each visible satellite. The difference, called a pseudorange correction, between the known pseudorange and the computed pseudorange is transmitted for each such SATPS satellite, along with an indicium that identifies that satellite. A mobile SATPS station within 100-200 kilometers (km) of the reference station receives and uses these pseudorange corrections to correct its own SATPS-determined pseudorange values for each acceptable satellite signal. The pseudorange corrections must be received and processed at the mobile station.
Several problems are presented here. First, this process assumes that the pseudorange corrections, determined at the SATPS reference station, are also valid at the mobile SATPS station, which may be spaced apart from the reference station by as much as 200 km. This assumption may be unjustified if the local ionosphere and/or the local troposphere is undergoing relatively rapid change with time, or if the multipath signals that contribute to the pseudoranges at the two stations are substantially different.
Second, this process requires that the pseudorange corrections always be transmitted to and used at the mobile SATPS station. In some situations, it may be more convenient to transmit the mobile station pseudorange information to the reference station and to allow the reference station to do the processing and subsequent analysis.
Third, the variables actually determined are not the pseudoranges but the locations themselves. A single central station and associated GPS reference station may service a large number of mobile users, each with a different location in the field. The pseudorange corrections for each user varies with the user's actual location in the field. In a tracking application, for example, the GPS-determined location of a mobile user is determined and transmitted to a central station for accumulating a time history of the user's location and for subsequent analysis, using the corrections determined by a GPS reference station at or near the central station. In a mapping application, a sequence of GPS-determined locations is computed and stored in a file in a mobile user's GPS receiver/processor. This file is stored at the central station, to use the corrections determined by a GPS reference station at or near the central station and to develop a corrected set of locations for sites that were earlier mapped by the user.
Although measurements and use of pseudoranges are fundamental to SATPS-assisted determination of location and/or time coordinates, only a few patents disclose procedures that work directly with the pseudorange values. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,678, Hurd discloses a GPS receiver that receives a plurality of pseudorange signals, compares these signals with replicas of the expected pseudorange signals, using a correlation technique, and determines the associated time delay, frequency and other variables of interest for these signals to determine receiver location, velocity, clock offset and clock rate.
Keegan discloses a P-code receiver/processor: in U.S. Pat. No. 4,972,431, that analyzes pseudorange and phase for encrypted GPS signals by squaring and filtering the incoming signals. Weaker signals can be analyzed using this technique.
A multi-antenna system for GPS signals that determines time biases in the carrier frequencies from time averaging in simultaneous pseudorange measurements is disclosed by Counselman in U.S. Pat. No. 4,809,005. GPS antennas are placed on a seismic survey vessel and on a towed vessel to sense and compensate for false signals received by the seismic vessel antenna(s), and present location of the survey vessel is determined. Similar techniques are disclosed by Counselman, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,894,662, for determining present location using only C/A signals transmitted by the satellites.
Allison, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,179, discloses a method for using double differences of pseudorange and carrier phase measurements. The technique uses double differences formed from signals received from four satellites by two different receivers to eliminate certain bias and atmospheric perturbation terms.
A GPS receiver that uses conventional pseudorange and carrier phase measurements to provide a directional indicator, such as a compass, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,266,958, issued to Durboraw. A single antenna is moved in a closed path, and differences between predicted and actual carrier phases are used to determine location perturbations, which are then resolved into components parallel and perpendicular to a desired path heading in a given plane.
These patents measure pseudoranges, usually at a single station, and apply complex analysis to determine as much as possible from these single-station measurements. Where differential GPS or SATPS pseudorange corrections are sought, a procedure must be found to allow consistent sharing of these corrections and to provide consistent determination of the corresponding location coordinate and clock bias corrections for a reference station and one or more mobile stations that communicate with the reference station.
What is needed is a method and apparatus for converting a mobile user's uncorrected SATPS-determined location in the field to the equivalent uncorrected pseudoranges at the user's location, applying the pseudorange corrections appropriate for the user's location, and determining the user's corrected location coordinates. The pseudorange corrections should be based on the mobile user's present location, not on the location of a reference station used for initially determining these corrections. Preferably, this method should be implementable by modest changes made to the existing SATPS location determination software and with no changes in the associated hardware at the reference station or carried by the mobile user. Preferably, this method should require only one-way transmission of data for pseudorange corrections, and the amount of data transmitted should be minimized.